Repeating Patterns
Muscle memory is essential to doodling. You'll find that you'll often fall back on your most-used shapes and patterns when you're creating. Committing your doodles to muscle memory isn't as hard as it sounds—all it takes is practice! Check out the video below to see what I mean.
Tips & Tricks:
- Your patterns can vary in size. Feel free to add thicker and thinner images, but be sure keep your spacing in between each one the same. This will keep your page looking cohesive.
- Tedious patterns are so useful for creating muscle memory. Don't skip the simple patterns!
- Curves and straight lines are used a lot in doodles. To get even more practice in, fill a whole page with patterns featuring these lines.
- When you're drawing straight lines all the way across your page, I recommend moving your whole arm instead of just your wrist.
- If you're having a hard time drawing these patterns, use the practice sheet with a lightbox and trace the images. This exercise will still be beneficial in creating muscle memory and you can move on to drawing them freehand when you're ready!
Strengthening your hand also helps with consistency. Practice your doodling with the fun and helpful exercises we did in the video! I included a download in the lesson files for you to get started.
Remember, work at this daily! If you work at doodling a little bit every day, muscle memory will be your friend and it'll be so much easier to pick back up where you left off. You'll start to see progress a lot faster if you put that pen to paper every single day.
ASSIGNMENT: Complete the PDF practice sheet and work on consistently repeating patterns. If you want to practice a specific pattern more, draw a whole page of it! This exercise will improve your muscle memory every time you do it—so don't skip this step!
LESSON FILES:
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